Day 158 - Clematis in Glass

Combining my recent interests of flowers and glass, here's a flower in a glass.  Aside from quite liking this shot from an aesthetic point of view, I'm really pleased with the range of tones in the grey that the lighting brings out.  This also gives me another tool in box for effectively photographing glasses of liquid.  Rather than relying on edge definition with a separate colour out of shot, this uses the gradient in the background and its reversal when viewed through water to tell the viewer that there is a liquid there.  Lovely bit of optics for the scientists out there.  Hello Robin.

Day 157 - wind bottle and glass

About time I had some more practice with tricky lighting, so here is some more glass for you.  As in previous low key glass photos, I placed a large white board just out of shot to give the lovely edge definition.  I like the way the light on the label gives the shape of the bottle and so more depth to the shot, but really the label could do with lighting separately so we can read the writing more easily.

Day 156 - flower portrait

And another... Not quite sure what these are called.  Back in the garden for this one, shooting in the evening but using the background to block the direct sun to soften the light.

Day 154 - Clematis

Another diffuse light flower portrait, this time shot in the kitchen and converted to mono.

Day 153 - Scabious

Similar technique to the other night.  I made sure I was above the flower so the shallow depth of field caused the stem to fade out.

Day 152 - Redcurrant cutting

This was an attempt to make use of some clever techniques for shooting glass, without it looking too much like an exercise in lighting theory.  Cutting stuck in water, lit using diffuse window light with black boards to left and right to give the edge definition in the glass.  High contrast conversion to mono to bring out the texture in the leaves.

Day 151 - Clematis

The first of a number of natural light flower portraits that I'm planning to shoot now life has returned to the frozen land of Yorkshire.

This was shot in the garden using natural light on an overcast evening.  I placed my big white foam board behind the flower, set aperture to f/1.8 and set exposure compensation to +1 stop.  Fairly minimal post-production work means this is pretty much seen as shot.

Day 150 - Sea Holly zoom burst

Another technique that I've never played with before is a zoom burst.  You could do also this in post-production, but I think I've made my thoughts on that approach clear now!  My subject was a sea holly on white, which isn't really a classic zoom burst shot as it doesn't have the radiating blurred lines in the background.  However, I quite like the effect so here it is.

After a bit of experimenting, I put the camera on a tripod and used a shutter speed of 1/2 sec for this shot.

Day 145 - lemon on a DIY lightbox

I made myself a quick DIY lightbox to take this shot.  I stuck a sheet of baking parchment over the hole in a tissue box, ripped open one of the ends, stuck the flash inside and triggered it using the Cactus V4 wireless trigger.  All very technical you understand...

Day 137 - Blue Iris

Back to flash today.  Single flash with shoot through umbrella, nice and close to get the fall off before the background.

Day 117 - Green shoots

Not the green shoots of financial recovery, but the wonderful site of seeds starting to grow.  In this particular case, an aubergine.  No idea if we'll get it to fruit in Yorkshire, but at least I've got a snap from it.

This was lit with one flash above with shoot through umbrella and another tightly snooted directly above to light the inside of the pot.  This gives the crisp, bright look to the compost and seedling, without spilling over on the outside surface.

Day 110 - old leather

Another aspect of my photography that I wanted to develop this year is being able to pre-visualise the shot.  In this case I knew exactly what I was hoping to achieve with a toned, low key picture of an old much-loved shoe.  First, some soft but directional light with the Lumiquest Softbox III, then some post work with a sepia tint and different levels of Gaussian blur, all as layers with varying levels of opacity over a sharpened up original.

Day 107 - good egg

I took this using a single flash with Lumiquest Softbox III very close behind the egg, with large white reflector in front to give a little texture to the front surface.

Day 97 - bowl with a hole

A rather nice bit of pottery for you:

I shot this using one speedlight with shoot through umbrella above right for fill and another bare above and behind the bowl to give the well defined holes in the shadow.

Day 94 - Tulips

Some more tulips...

The composition isn't particularly interesting, but I liked the lighting.  These were shot using the YN 460-II with Lumiquest Softbox II as key camera left.  I got the background by firing a bare Vivitar 730AFC on low power through some frosted glass.

Day 81 - books

A pile of books that I quite enjoyed, back when I had time to read.  Before kids and trying to take a photo every day!

Lit using the YN 460-II with Lumiquest Softbox III from above and slightly left and large white board reflector to the right.

Day 79 - glass class

I've been reading up on lighting glass, so I thought I'd best have a practice shooting this wine glass.

Strobist info: one flash (Sigma 530 DG Super and YN 460-II) on each side, fired onto white boards @ 1/32 power.

edit - On reflection, this should really have a black border.  Oh well.

Day 78 - yellow rose

This flower portrait used two lights.  The first soft key light is right above the camera in a mini-softbox.  A second bare flash to the rear is giving a little rim light and picks out the colour and texture of the petals.

Day 77 - nice buns

The girls made some buns and I managed to take a photo before scoffing the lot.

To light this I used a single flash with shoot through umbrella above and slightly behind.  The background is just a  flat white foam board.

Day 74 - two by two

I had another go at shooting a subject on a sheet of glass today, slightly more successfully I think.

I used a black board backdrop with a single flash and shoot through umbrella above and slightly behind the animals.  A white board reflector was placed in front of the subjects, angling light back through the glass.  Both the umbrella and the board were placed to avoid getting a direct reflection of them in the shot.